Coming Soon - IFTTT driver adds voice recognition, geofencing, connected car, smart appliances and more

[alanchow]

Hi guys,

Its rare that i'm excited about a driver (i build them everyday) but this driver here adds so much to Control4 especially to those of you who have Composer Home Edition.  This driver is pretty much ready for release.  I'm just putting the final touches on the documentation so once thats complete it'll be ready for everyone to use.

The IFTTT maker driver is a bi-directional driver which adds communications from Control4 to IFTTT to control any service or product on IFTTT and vice versa.  You can replace quite a few outbound services by having Control4 send emails, push notifications, SMS's and more to IFTTT (it pretty much replaces the majority of the functionality of our Notification Suite and Control4's 4sight).  It also does the same thing as many other 3rd party inbound services like Geofencing drivers, Amazon Alexa drivers, various Calandar drivers and more.  Here are some examples of what you can achieve but at the end of the day its really upto your imagination.

Lastly a big thanks to Mitch for helping me out with brainstorming with me and testing the driver.  Without him the driver wouldn't be as fast and responsive as it is today.

Outbound Examples (Control4 > IFTTT)

• Control4 can send SMS’s via your Android phone (IF app must be downloaded to the phone)
• Control4 can call your phone number and say a message (for security alarms, smoke alarms and other emergencies).
• Control4 can save data about the events in your home in google docs or dropbox.
• Control4 can save data about the events in your home to IFTTT’s daily or weekly email digest.
• Control4 can send emails out without 4sight or 3^rd party driver
• Control4 can send push notifications out without 4sight or 3^rd party driver (using pushalot, pushbullet or pushover)
• Control4 can send Skype messages
• Control4 can send Google Glass notifications (with Message, Image URL and URL fields).
• Control4 can send notifications to your Android wear device (requires IF app installed).
• Control4 can send your BMW (Connected Drive Compatible) a message on your car’s front screen display (120 characters limited)
• Control4 can find lost items (needs tags) or phones (call your phone).
• Control4 can send your Tesla (EVE enabled) a message (with subject, message and message type fields) on your car’s dashboard
• Control4 can turn on or off your GE Smart Appliance and more.
• Control4 can tell your Android phone to turn on/off Bluetooth or wifi (might be useful when you’re leaving or coming back home).
• Tell the world via Facebook what your home is upto (might not be a good idea).
• When batteries are low on your Control4 sensors add a reminder to your IOS reminders app.

Inbound Examples (IFTTT > Control4)

• Amazon Alexa (Amazon Echo, Tap, etc) can send commands to Control4 via voice recognition to do things like turn lights on, play music, house off and more.
• Assissant.ai can send commands to Control4 via voice recognition
• Control4 can read out stock prices or notify you when they raise or lower (requires Chowmain Advanced Announcements Driver)
• Control4 can pause your music and videos when you answer your phone (android only)
• Control4 can read out tweets when someone mentions you on twitter (requires Chowmain Advanced Announcements Driver)
• Control4 can detect if a specific person has entered or left a room/zone using beacons.
• iOS Location and Android Location (via the IF app) can tell Control4 when you are approaching or leaving home.
• Send a warning to Control4 when something has been picked up or moved (needs wireless tag)
• Your BMW (Connected Drive Compatible) can tell Control4 when it is entering or exiting an area.
• Your EVE enabled Tesla car can tell Control4 when it has arrived home, is leaving home or on the way home.
• Your Automatic, Zubie or Dash enabled car can tell Conrol4 when you have turned the car on or off within a certain area.
• Your GE, LG and Samsung Smart appliances can tell Control4 when it has been turned on, off, if for example an oven timer is done, if there is a leak in the dishwasher, if the filter needs cleaning, if the dryer cycle has finished, if the fridge door has been left open for too long,
• Your Nest Protect smoke alarm can send Control4 smoke emergency, warning and carbon monoxide emergencies
• Your Netatmo Welcome can tell Control4 when a specific person, known person or even an unknown person has been seen or arrives home (facial recognition)
• Your Roost Smart Battery can tell Control4 (via the announcement agent) when its battery is low (Great for smoke alarms).
• Control Control4 via SMS or phone call to IFTTT.
• Have Control4 read out your meetings (including subject, body & location) on outlook 365 calendar  or Google calendar 15 minutes before the meeting (requires Chowmain Advanced Announcements driver)
• If the temperature (via weather forecast/conditions) changes in your area tell Control4 to do something.
• Your Android phone can tell Control4 when it has connected or disconnected to/from a specific Wifi network.
• Change the colours of your RGB LED’s to your teams colour using the ESPN channel when the game starts.

[msgreenf]

I think everyone is going to love this!  This is a great driver that will give SO much power to control4!  And you can trigger off anything and everything that integrates with IFTTT.  I have been thinking of crazy way to use it, but Alan didn't want to include those in documentation

 

Have color change LED's in a bar?  When your favorite team plays, change the color automatically

 

 

[knowitall]

We're not worthy we're not worthy

[msgreenf]

And i think for the power of the driver, the price is very fair

[vstar]

wow, sounds great, the ultimate Swiss army knife driver.

great job Alan, keep up the great work.

 

[South Africa C4 user]

So when can we get it...?

[msgreenf]

42 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

So when can we get it...?

it will be released on Friday!  Just a few days away.  it will, like the rest of Chowmain drivers, be available via Houselogix.

[Bullseye]

10 hours ago, msgreenf said:

And i think for the power of the driver, the price is very fair

Is there an "msrp" for us mortals???

[alanchow]

1 hour ago, Bullseye said:

Is there an "msrp" for us mortals???

MSRP is $90usd.  Documentation is finally done (45 pages) so i'm releasing the driver today (bit earlier then expected).

[alanchow]

This driver is now released.  Have fun guys.

 

[South Africa C4 user]

I must say Alan, I have just been playing with the 48 hour test version of your driver and it is certainly extremely powerful. Well done!

I have been playing with the Amazon Alexa component (which is my biggest interest at present) and my big challenge is that there are now (at least) 3 different Alexa drivers out there and they all have unique advantages... I have programming linked to all 3 but need to go in one direction and I don't know which way to go... I would like a merged version giving the best of the 3...

That said, even if I don't use your driver for Alexa, I'm going to be buying a licence as I can see many uses already and I have no doubt that, in time, IFTTT is just going to grow and this is a great add on for C4!

Thanks again for one of the most powerful drivers I've seen!

[alanchow]

16 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I must say Alan, I have just been playing with the 48 hour test version of your driver and it is certainly extremely powerful. Well done!

I have been playing with the Amazon Alexa component (which is my biggest interest at present) and my big challenge is that there are now (at least) 3 different Alexa drivers out there and they all have unique advantages... I have programming linked to all 3 but need to go in one direction and I don't know which way to go... I would like a merged version giving the best of the 3...

That said, even if I don't use your driver for Alexa, I'm going to be buying a licence as I can see many uses already and I have no doubt that, in time, IFTTT is just going to grow and this is a great add on for C4!

Thanks again for one of the most powerful drivers I've seen!

Thanks for the feedback.  Yeah it is extremely powerful.  Yesterday a friend of mine in the US helped me out with testing the phone call functionality.  Control4 triggered a recipe that called him up and dynamically spoke to him utilising variables from the driver.

Its one of those solutions that over time people will come up with cooler and cooler applications.

i can't wait to see what people do with the driver.

[Rod Matthews]

Been playing with it at the shop and the geofencing and wifi connect/disconnect to turn on lights and lock/unlock doors works perfectly. Will be trying the voice integration next. Awesome driver and cant wait to play with it some more

[alanchow]

1 hour ago, Rod Matthews said:

Been playing with it at the shop and the geofencing and wifi connect/disconnect to turn on lights and lock/unlock doors works perfectly. Will be trying the voice integration next. Awesome driver and cant wait to play with it some more

Nice.  Always good to hear about what people are doing with the driver.  The wifi connect/disconnect is pretty cool.  I don't have an android phone so can't really test that out myself.

[Dave w]

This is really nice.  I've been playing with it all day.  Really powerful and useful.  Thanks for building.  

The only issue I have is that the biggest advantage of C4 is the power of full on-premise control which has both speed, reliability, and security advantages.  If I am relying on both 3rd party server as well as cloud hosted apps, I loose all three advantages.  I dread the day when I don't get a notice for something critical like an alarm trigger due to a 3rd party server (pushover or IFTTT) being down or unreachable. lastly I'm not sure who at pushover knows what my geolocation is and how to shut my alarm off.  Not to be a downer, I'd just rather see C4 or partners develop this capability natively w/o need for integration with 3rd party web services.  Until they do, I am eternally grateful.

two side issues:

1. typo on pg19 of documentation:  Example two - how to gave C4 phone you.... Instruction #2. says "select the event you want to get an email from..."   Should be "call from.."

2. Any thoughts on getting multiple people set up for concurrent geofencing? i.e,  IF all users are outside Geofence Then X, If One or more users inside Geofence then Y..  

 

[alanchow]

43 minutes ago, Dave w said:

This is really nice.  I've been playing with it all day.  Really powerful and useful.  Thanks for building.  

The only issue I have is that the biggest advantage of C4 is the power of full on-premise control which has both speed, reliability, and security advantages.  If I am relying on both 3rd party server as well as cloud hosted apps, I loose all three advantages.  I dread the day when I don't get a notice for something critical like an alarm trigger due to a 3rd party server (pushover or IFTTT) being down or unreachable. lastly I'm not sure who at pushover knows what my geolocation is and how to shut my alarm off.  Not to be a downer, I'd just rather see C4 or partners develop this capability natively w/o need for integration with 3rd party web services.  Until they do, I am eternally grateful.

two side issues:

1. typo on pg19 of documentation:  Example two - how to gave C4 phone you.... Instruction #2. says "select the event you want to get an email from..."   Should be "call from.."

2. Any thoughts on getting multiple people set up for concurrent geofencing? i.e,  IF all users are outside Geofence Then X, If One or more users inside Geofence then Y..  

 

Thanks for finding the error in documentation.  Will update it for the next release of the documentation.

• Speed is actually extremely fast depending on the IFTTT trigger.  Since we utilise websockets we know instantly when a new notification has arrived.  With Amazon Echo for example my house reacts within 1-2 seconds of sending the Alexa trigger.
• In regards to geolocation pushover never receives this information as IFTTT receives the information and then sends the trigger to pushover.  Pushover will only receive a Title and Message that you define.  If you are paranoid you can always obfuscate the title and message that IFTTT sends to pushover to something obscure and meanless.
• In regards to online notifications and services like any web service down time will effect you.  Control4 is no exception (from memory i think they had 2-3 outages for extended periods in the past 2 months where 4sight was down).  Nothing is fool proof but if you require reliablitiy then you should always rely on your alarm system's GSM functionality and/or utilise a security monitoring service.
• In regards to your feature request its really something that is out of our hands.  We developed the tool that integrates IFTTT to Control4 and vice versa.  We have no control over what channels are on IFTTT, how the channels operate and what functionality they have.  If you want that kind of functionality in the IFTTT channel then you will need to submit a feature request to IFTTT themselves or whoever created the IFTTT channel.

Lastly please don't take this the wrong way but you should never setup disarming of an alarm system without a code.  That's just plain silly and insecure.

[alanchow]

Forgot to mention security.  Our driver and pushover utliises WSS and HTTPS based secure communications.  Please read Pushover and IFTTT's privacy policy and discuss with them if you have any privacy concerns.

[alanchow]

Also we do not store any username's or password's in the driver.  The driver automatically discards the username and password as soon as the token is received from Pushover as per their API guidelines.  If you feel the token has been stolen (which i don't see how they can do this) then you can delete the device from the pushover server and have Control4 reset it back up again with a different token.

Same goes with IFTTT's Key.

[Dave w]

Thanks., I have read both privacy policies.  I work in the data privacy and security field advising large global companies on issues with data collection, use, and security.  Pushover;s was one of  the best privacy policies I have seen to date.  None of my comments were directed as the driver or services specifically.  I apologize if it seemed that way.  I was more a comment on theoretical direction we seem to be heading from closed on premise system to sharing data across multiple cloud applications.   And agreed I would never disarm my alarm via a trigger.  It was just a generic example.  i realize the point is convenience vs mission critical control. But as we come to rely on this stuff more and more those lines are often blurred.   In any event we are all better off than we were a week ago, so again hat's.off to you.   

[Wattsup]

Just to say I have already installed and purchased the driver and can only repeat others view - awesome job and thanks for finally giving me a way to integrate my Ring doorbell, Orvibo plug, sainsmart relay, Kodi, plex etc ....well I could go on but thank you Alan and congratulations on your ' other ' growing family.

[neil12011]

Brutally cool, can't wait to test this!  I'm sure it's as awesome as your other work.  Raising the bar again sir.

[alanchow]

46 minutes ago, Wattsup said:

Just to say I have already installed and purchased the driver and can only repeat others view - awesome job and thanks for finally giving me a way to integrate my Ring doorbell, Orvibo plug, sainsmart relay, Kodi, plex etc ....well I could go on but thank you Alan and congratulations on your ' other ' growing family.

Thanks for purchasing the licence.  I'm surprised at how many we have sold since releasing the driver 24 hours ago.

would love to hear what recipes everyone can come up with.

46 minutes ago, neil12011 said:

Brutally cool, can't wait to test this!  I'm sure it's as awesome as your other work.  Raising the bar again sir.

Thanks. I like adding functionality to Control4 that it either natively doesn't have, makes it more affordable for people and also make it do cool things.

i write drivers full time so every purchase helps keep me in business and gives incentive to keep doing what I do (make Control4 more awesome).

i hope everyone enjoys the driver as much as I do.  If you own Composer Home Edition is a definite must have driver in my opinion.

[neil12011]

I literally tried the driver for 10 minutes, set it up, and bought it instantly... I'm going to push this as hard as I can.  

 

Keep in mind folks, I do this for a living, and quality drivers like this get me stoked all over again.  Kudos sir.

[alanchow]

10 minutes ago, neil12011 said:

I literally tried the driver for 10 minutes, set it up, and bought it instantly... I'm going to push this as hard as I can.  

 

Keep in mind folks, I do this for a living, and quality drivers like this get me stoked all over again.  Kudos sir.

Thanks Neil.  I agree.  I develop drivers everyday so its rare for me to get excited by stuff but this driver for me has got me thinking day in and day out of new and different ways we can use Control4.

Would love to hear about what recipes you come up with.  Keep me posted.

[neil12011]

It's 4am here and I'm stupid excited setting things up.  I normally don't plug here, but folks, drop what you're doing and buy this driver, like NOW.